Friday, 1 September 2006

How do you introduce Katiedid of Seldom Nice Nowadays? Her blog always makes me scream with laughter. It’s not for the faint-hearted, though: it sometimes contains, erm, ‘language’ (and so does her Slap – you have been warned, LOL!). Are there any limits to her imagination? The things she does with words and images! She is one of a kind. It is my pleasure to welcome a true heir of the Surrealists.Bela is kindly allowing me to guest slap this month, but I'm so anxious about it. Who do I pick for a whole month? What if I pick one target, only to find a better one later? Gahhhhh! So here is a brief list of folks I would like to slap at the moment:1.) Taco Bell, for their fourth meal campaign:
Hello idiots, this is AMERICA. We couldn't care less about your fourth meal proposal because we're already too busy choking down our ninth meal of the day.2.) Snakes on a Plane:
I'm not slapping the movie because it isn't geniusly cheesy. It is. I'm simply sick of the hype and the formulaic quality of the concept ("scary things" + "transportation" = "hit movie.") What's next? Clowns on a Plane? If you can squeeze 20 of them into a tiny car, imagine the terrifying possibilities a jumbo jet offers. Or Mimes on a Spaceship? After all. In space, no one can see you scream. No, maybe I'm being too hard on the movie. The formula breaks down when you consider Mice on a School Bus. That'd be kind of adorable, actually.

3.) Galvanized Steel Plumbing:
No special reason, but it's had it coming for a while now.4.) The "Two-Buck Chuck," aka Charles Shaw, wine cult:
Shut up, already. It does not taste "pretty good." It's cheap. It's potable (technically.) It's like raving about the Ford Escort as a kick-ass ride: we nod not because we agree, but because that's how one politely allows others to their insane delusions.5.) My next door neighbor:
He's a nice guy. But he carries his pet bird on his shoulder everywhere he goes. Everywhere. Unless you're sporting a matching eyepatch and pegleg, that looks a little crazy to the rest of us.6.) The very small minority of people who make fun when I quote Shakespeare:
Listen, it's not my fault you can sing his stuff to the theme from Gilligan's Island. Now I'd understand if folks rolled their eyes because quoting Shakespeare comes off as pretentious in some cirucumstances. Oh hell. It beats a round of 99 Beers on the Wall, doesn't it?7.) I would like to slap rogue racoons, but they'd only bite my hand clean off if I tried.8.) Open buffet restaurants:
I hate them. So much. My antipathy towards them pains my husband to no end. "Honey, there's no waiting, you get to serve yourself!" Don't we do that pretty much every day at home for free? Sanitary concerns with buffets aside... if I'm going to the expense of eating out, I want someone to serve me for a change, thank you.9.) Which brings me to, self-serve checkout stands at stores:
I've worked retail checkouts before. I refuse to do it without pay. Manning a register and checking people out can be crummy work, but earning minimum wage while putting up with poorly maintained and obstinate machinery is a perfectly honorable job. I have no desire to revist the salad days of my own youthful employment. I therefore don't care if I have to stand in line a whole three minutes longer to wait for a cashier to ring me up. At the very least customers should receive a discount for doing this work for the store. I know a shell game when I see one. Stores which are introducing it promise, amongst other things, that it will keep costs down so they'll pass the savings onto us. Remember when ATMs were first introduced, and the banking industry promised us that lower charges would swiftly ensue since we'd removed the human element (meaning, someone's job) from the practice? Did that happen? No, now we see charges for ATM card use and for interacting with an acutal teller on top of it all, too. Don't buy into their confidence man's scam!10.) Johnny Depp:
Were it not for him, as an American I could have lived my life blissfully unaware of the existence of Vanessa Paradis. She's his supposedly beautiful partner, if you go for that sort of "I don't eat sandwiches, I just smell them as they pass by" angle-boned waif look, and as long as she smiles with her lips closed. However, you shouldn't be able to play children's hand games with your face. Games like:Here is the church, Here is the steeple,

Open her mouth, and see all the people! Gaaahhh!

It's as if her teeth don't exist as a set, but as individual dental entities.

On one hand, I find it refreshing she didn't conform to make it in the modeling and entertainment world. On the other hand... LOOK. AT. HER. TEETH.

BONUS SLAP!
I'd like to slap myself, due to my poor grammar (see #3.) And also for being so depravedly shallow (see #1 through #10.) I'm unable to slap who I'd really like to, the Syrian ambassador to the US, because I'm unable to articulate anything beyond "fuck you" to him whenever he's on the the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer pretending to care about the Lebanese people, or for that matter, peace with Israel. But this is not "Fuck You of the Day," so it's not on the list. (Well, just in case Bela will let me get away with it: fuck you, Imad Moustapha.)

As one of Katie's biggest fans, I'm thrilled that you invited her to slapsterhood.

Katie, in the spirit of self-serve grocery checkout lines, I would like to add hotels that post little signs in the bathroom saying they're "trying to save the planet" by asking guests to reuse sheets and towels. I "save the planet" by reusing them for weeks on end at home. When I'm in a hotel I want them clean, dammit.

What a 'meaty' Slap! A few things I can't comment on because I'm not an American ('Should have been one!' she wails).

I know a lot of Shakespeare, but I'm blessed with the most terrible memory for quotes so I never quote him. Usually, people get it wrong anyway. It does sound horribly pretentious.

I hate self-serve checkouts. Our local Tesco has some. I can't stand that voice ('Place your item on the whatever!') and I've discovered they're very dangerous: you can stick your credit card in to pay for your stuff and it doesn't ask you for your PIN or anything. Anyone getting hold of your card could buy the entire shop with it. It's crazy.

I find Vanessa Paradis very ugly - not just because of her teeth: I'm not an American *wails* so I don't have a thing about perfect, gleaming white teeth, but I don't like that big forehead. Also, she looks ferrety in that very French ferrety way.

jvs, thanks! I love Mexican food too much for my own good, too. But FOURTH meal? After the whole thing with the Fast Food Nation book, and the Spurlock documentary on McDonalds, I simply can't imagine what they were thinking.

PJ, thank you - it's really not so bad, it's just rather... I dunno, just, not good.

Sticky, that is the single best reason I've heard to see that movie. Because the manufactured cheesiness of it is not enough for me.

Mireille, well, I'm not alone there, *ahem*.

Winterwheat, oh, lordy, I've not run into that much since the kids were born, but yeah, that's one of those things where I'd rather not be eco-friendly either. Yikes. And it's not as if it's not a big enough pain sometimes getting them to give you enough towels anyhow, so sometimes you're forced to reuse do to their stinginess. Bleh to them.

Bela, well I can live with that, heh. But Shakespeare has a way with insults that I find irresistible. I mean, "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!" In context it's funny, but out of context even funnier. Uh, except I excise the black on account of it sounds pretty racist out of context.

GSE, I truly despise the self-serve trend. In the US, those jobs aren't just for those otherwise employable either. I know college ("university" elsewhere) who work those jobs, simply because that is the state of our job market these days. It's a job, you know? Better to be gainfully employed than trying to scam a living on the dole. Taking those perfectly respectable jobs away ticks me off. Um, that I'm super lazy.

Just wanted to drop in to say thank you katiedid, so much of what you wrote added some much needed laughter. Your site is funny as hell. I hope that you write professionally (if you already haven't) at sometime in your life.